Many people may know
about Buddhism, but few seem to understand its connections with Vedic culture
and how many aspects of it have origins in the Vedic philosophy. To begin with,
it was several hundred years before the time of Lord Buddha that his
birth was predicted in the Srimad-Bhagavatam: "In the beginning of the age of
Kali, the Supreme Personality of Godhead will appear in the province of Gaya as
Lord Buddha, the son of Anjana, to bewilder those who are always envious of the
devotees of the Lord." (Bhag.1.3.24)

This verse indicates that Lord Buddha was an incarnation of the
Supreme who would appear in Gaya, a town in central India. But some historians
may point out that Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was actually born in Lumbini,
Nepal, and that his mother was Queen Mahamaya. Therefore, this verse may be
inaccurate. But actually Siddhartha became the Buddha after he attained
spiritual enlightenment during his meditation under the Bo tree in Gaya. This
means that his spiritual realization was his second and most important birth.
Furthermore, Siddhartha's mother, Queen Mahamaya, died several days after
Siddhartha's birth, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother, Anjana. So the
prediction in the Bhagavatam is verified.

When Lord Buddha appeared, the people of India, although following the
Vedas, had deviated from the primary goal of Vedic philosophy. They had
become preoccupied with performing ceremonies and rituals for material
enjoyment. Some of the rituals included animal sacrifices. The people had begun
to sacrifice animals indiscriminately on the plea of Vedic rituals and then
indulged in eating the flesh. Being misled by unworthy priests, much unnecessary
animal killing was going on and the people were becoming more degraded and
atheistic.

The rituals that included animal sacrifices, according to the Vedas,
were not meant for eating flesh. An old animal would be placed in the
sacrificial fire and, after the mantras were chanted, it would come out of the
fire in a new and younger body as a test to show the potency of the Vedic
mantras. However, as the power of the priests deteriorated, they could no longer
chant the mantras properly and, therefore, the animals would not be brought back
to life. So in the age of Kali all such sacrifices are forbidden because there
are no longer any brahmanas who can chant the mantras correctly. Thus, Lord
Buddha appeared and rejected the Vedic rituals and preached the philosophy of
nonviolence. In the Dhammapada (129-130) Buddha says, "All beings fear
death and pain, life is dear to all; therefore the wise man will not kill or
cause anything to be killed."

The Vedic literature also teaches nonviolence, but Buddha taught the
people who used the Vedas for improper purposes to give them up and
simply follow him. Thus, he saved the animals from being killed and saved the
people from being further misled by the corrupt priests. However, he did not
teach the Vedic conclusions of spiritual knowledge but taught his own
philosophy.

Buddha was born in the town of Lumbini in Nepal as the son of a king
of the Shakya clan. He is generally accepted to have lived during 560-477 B.C.
but has been shown to have been born in 1887 B.C. and died in 1807 B.C. Check
the article Reestablishing
the Date of Lord Buddha for more evidence of this.

His mother, Queen Mahamaya, before she conceived him, saw him in a
dream descending from heaven and entering her womb as a white elephant. After
his birth his father sheltered him from the problems of the world as much as
possible. Later, Buddha married and had one son. It was during this time that he
began to be disturbed by the problems life forced on everyone, especially after
he had seen for the first time a man afflicted with disease, another man who was
decrepit with age, a dead man being carried to the cremation grounds, and a monk
who had dedicated himself to the pursuit of finding a release from the problems
of life.

Soon after this, at the age of 29, he renounced his family and became
a wandering beggar. For six years Buddha sought enlightenment as an austere
ascetic. He would eat very little food, sometimes only one grain of rice a day,
and his bones would stick out as if he were a skeleton. Finally giving that up,
thinking that enlightenment was not to be found in such a severe manner, he
again became a beggar living on alms. When he started to eat more regularly, the
five mendicants who were with him left him alone, thinking that he had given up
his resolution. During this time he came to Gaya where he determinedly sat in
meditation under the Bo tree for seven weeks. He was tempted by Mara, the Evil
One, with many pleasures in an effort to make Gautama Buddha give up his quest.
But finally he attained enlightenment. It was then that he became the
enlightened Buddha.

Buddha at first hesitated to teach his realizations to others because
he knew that the world would not want them. Of what use would there be in trying
to teach men who were sunk in the darkness of illusion? Nonetheless, he decided
to make the attempt. He then went to Benares and met the five mendicants who had
deserted him near Gaya. There in the Deer Park, in present day Sarnath, he gave
his first sermon, which was the beginning of Buddhism.

Buddha taught four basic truths: that suffering exists, there is a
cause for suffering, suffering can be eradicated, and there is a means to end
all suffering. But these four noble truths had previously been discussed in the
Sankhya philosophy before Buddha's appearance, and had later been further
elaborated upon in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. So this train of thought
actually was not new.

Buddha also taught that suffering is essentially caused by ignorance
and our own mental confusion about the purpose life. The suffering we experience
can end once we rid ourselves of this confusion through the path of personal
development. Otherwise, this confusion and ignorance causes us to perform
unwanted activities that become part of our karma that must be endured in this
or another existence. When karma ceases, so does the need for birth and,
naturally, old age, sorrow, and death. With the cessation of birth, there is the
cessation of consciousness and entrance into nirvana follows. Thus,
according to this, there is no soul and no personal God, but only the void, the
nothingness that is the essence of everything to which we must return. Although
this was the basic premise from which Buddha taught, this theory was mentioned
in the Nasadiya-sukta of the Rig-veda long before Buddha ever
appeared.

However, Buddha refused to discuss how the world was created or what
was existence in nirvana. He simply taught that one should live in a way
that would produce no more karma while enduring whatever karmic reactions
destiny brought. This would free one from further rebirth.

In order to accomplish this, Buddha gave a complete system for
attaining nirvana that consisted of eight steps. These were right views
(recognizing the imperfect and temporary nature of the world), right resolve
(putting knowledge into practice or living the life of truth and nonviolence
toward all creatures, including vegetarianism), right speech (giving up lies,
slander, and unnecessary talk), right conduct (nonviolence, truthfulness,
celibacy, nonintoxication, and nonstealing), right livelihood (honest means of
living that does not interfere with others or with social harmony), right effort
(maintaining spiritual progress by remaining enthusiastic and without negative
thoughts), right mindfulness (remaining free from worldly attachments by
remembering the temporary nature of things), and right meditation (attaining
inner peace and tranquility and, finally, indifference to the world and one's
situation, which leads to nirvana). This, for the most part, is merely
another adaptation of the basic yamas and niyamas that are the
rules of what to do and what not to do that are found in the Vedic system of
yoga.

However, because of Buddha's lack of interest in discussing any
metaphysical topics, many interpretations of his philosophy were not only
possible but were formed, especially after his disappearance. The two main
divisions of Buddhism that developed were the Hinayana, or lesser vehicle, and
Mahayana, or greater vehicle. The Hinayana was more strict and held onto
Buddha's original teachings and uses Pali as the language of its scriptures. It
also accepts reaching nirvana as the goal of life. Hinayana stresses
one's own enlightenment and puts less emphasis on helping others, and Mahayana
emphasizes the need of enlightenment for the good of others while overlooking
the need to realize the truth within. The Mahayana accepts Sanskrit as the
language for its texts and integrates principles from other schools of
philosophy, making it more accessible to all varieties of people. Gradually, as
followers came from numerous cultural backgrounds, Mahayana Buddhism drastically
changed from its original form.

The ideal of the Mahayana system is the bodhisattva, the person
who works for enlightenment for all other living beings. The personification of
this enlightened compassion is one of the major deities of Buddhism,
Avalokiteshvara, who is represented in a variety of forms and images. The mantra
that is the sound representation of this enlightened compassion is om mani
padme hum, which is chanted on beads by aspiring Buddhists. The vibration of
this mantra evokes compassionate qualities and feelings in the heart and
consciousness of a person who chants it.

A third division of Buddhism is the Vajrayana sect. This has the same
principles as the Mahayana, but the Vajrayana bases its process for achieving
enlightenment on the Buddhist Tantras, which are supposed to reveal a
quicker path to enlightenment. The Vajrayana path is one of transforming the
inner psychological energy toward enlightenment by the use of various types of
yogic techniques. First they try to change their conventional perceptions of
this world by identifying themselves with the Buddhist deity that they feel
affinity for, and to view the mandala of the particular deity as the
world.

Ultimately, this form of meditation, as well as other techniques used
in this system, is meant to give one the experience of what is called the "clear
light." This clear light is said to be experienced by everyone shortly after
death, but most people hardly notice it because they are not prepared for it.
The idea is that if one is prepared for it before death, it can help one to be
ready to merge into it when he sees it after death.

As Buddhism flourished, the Hinayana spread through the south in
Ceylan, Burma, and Thailand, while the Mahayana spread to the North and East and
is now found primarily in Tibet, China, and Japan. The Mahayana school still
uses knowledge of kundalini and the chakras in its teachings,
other topics that are traced to the Vedic system. It is this Mahayana school
which has now developed more than twenty sects with a variety of teachings that,
in some cases, especially in the West, have become so distorted that it is
impossible to distinguish the original principles that were established by
Buddha.

Besides the Vedic similarities in Buddhism already mentioned, there
are many additional correlations between the Vedic literature
and the Buddhist religion of
the Far East. For example, the word Ch’an of the Ch’an school of Chinese
Buddhism is Chinese for the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means meditation,
as does the word zen in Japanese. Furthermore, the deity Amitayus is the
origin of all other Lokesvara forms of Buddha and is considered the original
spiritual master, just as Balarama (the expansion of Lord Krishna) in the Vedic
literature is the source of all the Vishnu incarnations and is the original
spiritual teacher. Also, the trinity doctrine of Mahayana
Buddhism explains the three realms of
manifestations of Buddha, which are the dharmakaya realm of Amitabha (the
original two-armed form is Amitayus), the sambhogakaya realm of the
spiritual manifestation (in which the undescended form of Lokesvara or Amitayus
reigns), and the rupakaya realm, the material manifestation (which is
where the Buddha in the form of Lokesvara incarnates in so many other different
forms). This is a derivative of the Vedic philosophy. Thus, Lokesvara is
actually a representation of Vishnu to the Mahayana Buddhists.

Furthermore, all the different incarnations of Vishnu appear as
different forms of Lokesvara in Buddhism. For example, Makendanatha Lokesvara is
the same as the Vedic Matsya, Badravaraha Lokesvara is Varaha, Hayagriva in
Buddhism is the horse-necked one as similarly described in the Vedic literature,
and so on. And the different forms of Lakshmi, Vishnu’s spouse as the Goddess of
Fortune, appear as the different forms of Tara in the forms of White Tara, the
Green Tara, etc. Even the fearful forms of Lokesvara are simply the fearful
aspects of Lord Vishnu, as in the case of the threatening image of Yamantaka,
who is simply the form of the Lord as death personified. The name is simply
taken from Yamaraja, the Vedic lord of death.

Many times you will also see Buddhist paintings depicting a threefold
bending form of Bodhisattvas and Lokesvaras much the same way Krishna is
depicted. This is because the Bodhisattvas were originally styled after
paintings from India, which were prints of Krishna. Most images of Tara are also
similar to paintings of Lakshmi in that one hand is held in benediction. And
Vajrayogini, the Buddha in female aspect, is certainly styled after goddess Kali
or Durga. Kuvera, the lord of wealth in the Vedic culture, is Kuvera Vaishravana
in Buddhism. There are many other carry-overs from the Vedic tradition into
Buddhism that can be recognized, such as the use of ghee lamps and kusha grass,
and the offerings of barley and ghee in rituals that resemble Vedic ceremonies.
In this way, we can see the many similarities and connections in Buddhism with
Vedic culture, which is the origin of many of the concepts found within
Buddhism.

Therefore,
after the disappearance of Lord Buddha, the authority of the Vedas and
Vedic culture was reinstated by such scholarly personalities as Shankaracarya,
Ramanujacarya, Madhvacarya, Nimbarka, Baladeva Vidyabushana, Sri Caitanya
Mahaprabhu, and others.

Also see, A Buddhist's Pilgrimage,
a photographic pilgrimage with 22 photos of the Holiest places of Buddha, including Lumbini
his birth place, Bodhgaya where he became enlightened,
Sarnath where he gave his first sermon, and Kushinagar where he left this world.
For a photographic visit to the major places of Buddha, including Lumbini,
Bodhgaya, Sarnath, and Kushinagar, which is located at
www.stephen-knapp.com.